Four companies competed for a combined $450,000 in cash and services
The Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) has today announced that Toomah, and Atlanta-based company that automated the interviewing process, has won the 2010 GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition. An airtight value proposition, a seasoned management team, and six paying customers including one member of the Inc 500 were all factors in Toomah’s taking home the gold, which in this case consisted of $50,000 cash and over $200,000 in donated services from the Atlanta business community.
“The judges made an excellent choice once again,” stated TAG president Tino Mantella, referring to the all star panel of judges that included Tom Crotty, Managing Director, Battery Ventures Boston; Stephen Fleming, Vice President, Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology; John Glushik, General Partner, Intersouth Partners; Boris Jerkunica, Chairman, Atlanta Silverbacks; Hooks K. Johnston,General Partner, Valhalla Partners; Mark Koulogeorge, Managing General Partner, MK Capital; Mark Morel, Chairman & CEO, Whoop, Inc.; and Alan Taetle, General Partner, Noro-Moseley Partners.
The other finalists – Khu.sh, a music intelligence application company; SolidFire, a cloud computing company; and Transaction Tree, a “green” company, will all split the remaining $200,000 in pro bono services, a first for the competition which had always just rewarded the winner. “We are pleased to be able to offer all of these promising young Georgia companies something to walk away with,” stated Sid Elliott, director for the GRA. “This has always been a public, private partnership and the business community really stepped up this year, especially.” Services including legal, consulting, marketing and even real estate space will be donated to the final participants in a way to not only help ensure their success, but to assist in connecting the Atlanta entrepreneurial community to the business community.
The competition, now in its fifth year, also facilitates connections between the younger entrepreneurial community and the more seasoned entrepreneurs, with the initial applications are screened by experts at the Atlanta Technology Development Authority (ATDC) and the most promising applicants being assigned a mentor for the duration of the competition. Participants are also connected to the investor community, with out of state venture capital companies being represented among the judge’s panel and a multitude of angel and venture capital investors in attendance at the event.
To view the 2010 GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition Suite of Services Directory:
Comments
RSS feed for comments to this post.